Though much is taken, much abides
by BasiliskRules
Summary: Because the sim!Doctor was carrying around River's diary in Extremis and I have feelings, alright? And I have to analyse character actions in a weird but emotional way. Oh, and because I'm evil, I guess./ / Or "In which your questions are answered with heartbreak, the Nope-landers send their regards."


**If I owned Doctor Who, the poor alien would go through even more psychological torture and horror than he already does, so be thankful that I don't.**

* * *

 _._

 _"But if someone's gone, do pictures really help?"_

Yes, yes they do, he wants to say. Though he does have surprisingly few of them given his long life; but he still has some.

He glances down at the ones in front of him, then away. Bill doesn't notice.

(His wife's loss was the most recent one, and so the most painful. Susan's was the first since he left his planet. And so they look and smile at him from the desk as seasons come and go, the first and the last and thirteen lives filed with more heartbreak between them. Of course it's symbolic on some level –and he curses that part of his subconscious for being a complicated masochist.)

He doesn't answer. Instead, he pats his new rug absentmindedly.

Say. There's an idea for a present.

(Quick and careful, of course, but he _is_ going somewhere after all.)

* * *

.

His students might have been as enthusiastic as ever about his eccentric lectures, but anyone _really_ listening the last year and a half, should have noticed that he was slowly going stir crazy confined to Earth and linear time. Again.

So he smiles too, up at the alien sky like an idiot –and swears he _will_ find one that is made of lemon drops one day.

(Just tonight, it's seven decades of vigilance, of one apparently disproportionate to the threat, into the thousand he swore. Missy will probably be extra nice just to annoy him and make him feel unnecessary.)

He does try, though.

 _"Shut up. You shut up as well. Will you all please just leave me alone? I can't do that any more. I promised!"_

But oh, the oldest loved one is still there and if he was one to abide by rules and laws he didn't believe were right, he never would have stolen her in the first place.

"Oh, for the love of… All right, wish me luck!"

* * *

.

As soon as Nardole leaves –slamming the door, nice– he sighs and picks up the yellow yo-yo again.

At least he thinks it's yellow. He distinctly remembers having a cheap yellow one.

"Stop it," he murmurs. "I can't be lucky all the time, you know."

A few seconds later he opens a creaking drawer and tosses it in. Really, it's been a while since he was this desperate to keep busy. It's only natural to fail spectacularly at it.

He cleans his shades while listening to the crackling fire, fidgets around aimlessly for a bit –books and papers, so many books and papers– and then abruptly stops, and leans slowly against his desk.

Ah. Stupid Doctor. This bit totally eluded you, didn't it?

Deep breath, in the darkness and the silence, and the oppressive emptiness that presses against him falls back slightly.

Well then.

(River's picture had come first, when his wife's birthday rolled around and it was the first in a long time without a celebratory night out or at least a cake, and the sudden contrasting loneliness was too much to bear without doing something.)

His hand inches carefully forward, guided by sound and memory, and his fingers trace the beloved shapes.

(And on one particularly restless evening in the early '60s, finding a photo of Susan, framing it, and placing it on his desk was all he could do to keep himself from running off to London and a very familiar junkyard, timelines be damned.)

They help, Bill, they really do –and he wants to sob. Because sometimes everything seems cruel, and he's been robbed of more than he had realised.

* * *

.

At some point, he allows himself five minutes to let out the pressure. Just five.

He's in the TARDIS, searching for some spare tuning keys (playing guitar doesn't necessarily require good vision, thank God), when he enters a room he doesn't immediately remember.

 _Of course_ his sunglasses pick that exact moment to start malfunctioning, and _of course_ he manages to drop them when he takes them off to do the ridiculously easy repairs they need.

He finds them easily, but there's a split second when his knee knocks against something, and it _really_ hurts, and he doesn't know where he is, and the sound of his ship dies in his ears, in his mind–

His body spasms violently, lashing out against the dark. Raw, primal terror threatens to overwhelm him and he sits down on the floor, against a wall.

The seconds tick by, the TARDIS singing soothingly in his mind. He runs a hand over his face and slowly musters his breathing. She gives him an encouraging hum.

(Because if he has to fool everyone, to pretend to the world, he needs to get used to it. He needs control at all times.)

Finally, he puts the glasses back on and trusts himself to stand.

(Because you're the Doctor and you're not allowed to break down; not ever. It's not a luxury you can afford.)

He distracts himself by examining his surroundings. It's a small, cluttered space, an untidy storeroom by all appearances. Oh.

The room that used to be near the swimming pool, lovely shade of green. Of course. That's where he had put the Christmas decorations last time. Although, what the typewriter and his umbrella collection are doing here is anyone's guess.

"I bet you got bored one day too", he mutters, and pats the wall affectionately.

On a shelf next to the fake tree, he finds a familiar book with a cracked spine, and a locked, cherry-wood box; and he smiles softly.

(He knows that inside rests a purple bow tie, alongside a curl of frizzy blond hair, a short Roman dagger, and the final page of an old novel, carefully folded under a pair of round glasses. For remembrance.)

He picks the book up carefully, and hesitates for a few seconds, fingers tapping a slow rhythm on the worn, TARDIS blue cover.

Finally, he brushes his lips against the battered book in a fleeting kiss, puts it in his pocket, and strokes the wooden lid of the box almost reassuringly before he leaves.

* * *

.

Perhaps it's silly that he carries River's diary with him when he cannot read, but the weight in his pocket is strangely comforting. Besides, as a wise man once said, what's wrong with silly?

There are no more spoilers hiding in the weathered pages, and he now knows a lot of them almost by heart. Which also helps.

Whenever the ache of some past grief pierces through, whenever the bad memories swamp him, so much worse in the dark, it's there. Because he has good ones too and somehow, it helps him remember that the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.

If he concentrates, he can imagine her voice reading the words.

(Because pictures may help, but other things can help too.)

* * *

 _._

 _"What do you think? Cry for help?"  
"Cry for help with a kiss?"  
"Oh, we've all done that."  
_  
Somewhere, there's an old man who isn't real. And you don't need to be real to be afraid, to feel pain, to die. But luckily, you don't have to be real to be the Doctor either.

And maybe it's true, what they say –he doesn't remember– that when you're about to die your whole life flashes before your eyes, because he suddenly, inexplicably remembers being young and dark-haired and very skinny, and a mysterious message on his psychic paper, and meeting her for the first time in a Library, all in a split second. And he gets another idea. One that's quite silly, really.

(With great effort, he raises his hand and activates the glasses again. Tries to concentrate.)

Then it's done, and he can't breathe, the whole world is flickering around him, dimensions twisting and dying, probably disintegrating like he is, but the fire of adrenaline and victory is still signing in his veins, and he turns away from his executioner and manages to stumble back, _her diary's just behind him on the big dresser by the wall_ -

(He leans against the wood trying to stay standing. The sensation is like sand slipping away, only _you_ are sand too, and so is everything else.)

Reality bends to desire –he thinks of echoes and copies and ghosts and fragments of memory, but _a man is the sum of his memories, a Time Lord even more so,_ _the soul's made of stories, and we are all stories in the end_ – and he manages to reach it, he doesn't know why he needs to but he doesn't care, he feels the battered cover under his rapidly numbing fingers-

(He's suddenly perversely glad that he's blind, because he doesn't have to see the light dying.)

His mind drifts, care and fear and thought itself falling away, but he imagines River teasing him for stealing her ideas, and he tries to smile one more time-

 _._

 _Additional message:  
P.S. Dear Doctor,  
Save Them  
The Doctor X._

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-the end-

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 **Thank you for reading!**

 **Reviews are tremendously appreciated and usually responded to.**


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